STG Investigative Report : Matriarch Thessial of Steelshape
by LogicalPremise
Summary: An in-depth STG Analysis of Matriarch Thessial, eternal party-girl and mad scientist. Covers history, tactics, and abilities. Part of my Mass Effect AU. Some mature concepts.


**A/N: **_This STG file is for _**_OmegaGregar_**_, who wasted several hours of his life helping me out. The next chapter is in the works, but I thought I'd go ahead and put this out there._

_As for shout-outs, two of the Editing Gang have stories up! Check out _**_Pallan Minerva _**_and his story _**_"The Saga of Shirou's Summons_**_,**"**_ _along with _**_SLotH4_**_**'s** works – he has Star Wars stuff, OSaBC side-stories, and stuff he's co-written with _**_Xabiar_**_._

_Also go read _**_Aberron_**_**'s** stuff. Naow._

* * *

**– STG – STG – STG –**

_STG Report on Matriarch Thessial_

Master Field Agent Kossi to the STG Master

Old fool, here is what we know about the swamp-rat, Thessial. Why her, instead of doing something productive…?

I mean, let's list: We have no leads on P. and his latest atrocity, we've continued to ignore the fact that the Deathwatch is running _flat-out concentration camps _for dissidents in the outer edges of the Hierarchy, the latest reports show the Immutable is still running around… and, of course, I presume we still haven't planned on actually taking action against the Broker for killing Danith and Vessi, or the attempt on Korals' life?

Or ignoring the fact that the SIX just signed us up to deal with an undead cybernetic nightmare working for Cerberus?

Why are we bothering retreading ancient reports on drug-whacked sex fiends instead of real work?

No matter, I suppose. They didn't pick you because you were _effective_, only because the last STG Master was such an incompetent pain in the ass it got assassinated by its own Executors. I should be glad you aren't asking for reports on Farmas.

Note: _Do not ask for reports on Farmas_.

The standard: as with the rest of what we put together, none of this is conclusive. It's conjecture. High-order information, lack of inclusivity, blah, blah, blah. Most of it is rumors, and most of those came from people who have problems with Thessial trampling their corporation or business interests.

This file is classified _Dethan-Blue__._ She's just not that important, honestly, and I haven't many fucks left to give in any case.

* * *

**Caution : Read FIRST:**

_[Addendum: Amusing, you hardcoded part of the report template. I can almost hear the ghost of Vessi cursing in my head, the poor bastard.]_

As usual, most if not all information on Thessial is based on the usual four inaccurate sources: existing historical accounts and records, eyewitness accounts, extranet information, and accumulated scans and examinations. Under no circumstances can this file be assumed complete, and as always assume that this file is a _baseline_ of her abilities, not a comprehensive coverage.

Thessial is what the turians would call a 'vharasi'; one who 'follows the tune of their own music, to the exclusion of any others in the dance.' I know the majority of STG is a big fan of hers, and that she's worked with us in the past quite a bit. I know she's tight with the SIX because she keeps _fucking the dalatrasses senseless_, and I guess I shouldn't complain about that if it makes Linron behave.

A lot of salarians love her and adore her because she acts like us and admires us. And yet, I don't trust her. She's shifty, crazy, drugged higher than P. at an elcor party, and hangs out with Vabo degenerates, Black Rim freaks, and (_whhyyy_) Farmas.

* * *

**– STG – STG – STG –**

**Matriarch Thessial, daughter of Shirosi, Nineteen-times Blessed of Clan Steelshape**

* * *

**Overview:**

_Formal Titles_: High Moonmason, Clan Steelshape. CEO of Thessial Connectivity and Omni-industries. Asari adjutant ambassador to the Salarian Union. Lots of other fancy-cloaca ceremonial titles that add nothing to understanding her.

_[Addendum: Technically, given she's had kids with more than a few dalatrasses, including Muvai Solus, she could be considered _**_Long-Ally_**_ to the Salarian People. She is also an unofficial advisor to the SIX on asari matters.]_

_Nicknames_: 'Thessial the Mad,' the 'Asari who was Salarian,' 'Thessial Too-Thin.' (Several others, usually of a racy nature, among some deviant STG members).

_Race_: Minor bionetic-augmented asari. Genetically, of the Clans, with minor heritage from a few Lesser Houses of the Thirty.

_Age and sex_: 908. Asari monogender. Eighty-seven living offspring, nine dead (six with dalatrasses, sixty-two with other salarians, fourteen or so with humans).

_Wealth_: Staggering and overly opulent in all regards. Her patents alone (the omni-tool, modern flash-forging, vectored mass effect gunships, most of the TTL system, and the datapad are only a few of the three-thousand-plus she has) bring in close to two billion credits annually. Much of this is reinvested into other ventures or business pursuits, or blown on drugs. Estimates are six billion in savings and investments, on top of the value of her corporation itself. She is by far the wealthiest non-Thirty asari in the galaxy, even outstripping Aria.

_Psychological Summary_: Oh, by the Wheel. She's a freak. She's waaay into the Depraved quadrant of Narcissistic personalities. Everything is about her, and how she wants to be seen and she pursues a life of frantic invention, creation, drug use, sex, and adventures. Basically, a lunatic with a genius edge to her. Not stable. _Creative_, thinks outside of the riverbanks and certainly more salarian-like in the way she thinks, but _not stable_.

_Military Summary_: Thankfully, even the fucking asari had enough sense not to let the drug addict near weapons. She has no military training at all and is noted as being singularly incompetent with her biotics. (On the other hand, read the tactics section. Her bodyguards… wow.)

_Education__: _Graduated with highest honors from the University of Thessia with a triple-degree in omni-engineering, haptic engineering, and applied electronics. Multiple doctorates in engineering and materials science from the University of Sur'Kesh. Also holds a degree in cybernetic engineering from the Serrican Ellistory of Applied Science and thousands of hours in classes in salarian art, music, language, and history.

_Employment_: Aside from her corporation and the Clan, she is also a member of the Thessian Court of Corporations and partner in Sur'Kesh Electronics and Optronics.

_Significant Family_: Aside from her own offspring and their offspring, numbering well into the hundreds, she is extremely well-connected to the Solus family – she's had offspring with nineteen of the Solus dalatrasses and twenty males over the centuries, enough so that the entire clan counts her as **near-Kin**. Her own asari family consists of two other sisters, both with clan connections as well as a niece who was adopted by House T'Chmath.

_Overall Threat Rating_: Sieltar Seven. As she's been for the past _six hundred rivers-be-damned years_. This is, for reasons that elude me, the two hundred and fifty-third update to this file.

* * *

**Historical Notes:**

Drugged up inventor sexes up lots of salarians, ends up making the first omni-tool, spends centuries getting blasted on drugs and sleeping with anything that isn't krogan, and gets put in charge of the asari inventor and creator clan.

Oh, you want _details_?

Fine, but be aware this reads more like a Fornax porno story setup than anything coherently called 'history.' You'll pardon me if I'm bitter, but putting this together meant wading through terabytes of poorly-put together fantasy porn, police reports, and outright made-up stories to find truth.

Thessial was born to the Low Clanwarder (ceremonial position like a secretary) to Clan Steelshape, right around the time of the Third Erosion (the tidal wave that crushed Sur'Kai City into gravel). The asari were at their high point, and the salarians were struggling with rebuilding from the damage. Like quite a few other births at that time, Thessial's father was a salarian – a data-clerk in the Customs Office. We don't have a lot of details on him, but he did leave with the asari contingent, so we assume he was another free-sex freak.

Like father, like daughter.

Steelshape was a mess, scattered across the galaxy. The Clan had declined greatly in those days, with more focus being placed on alien innovation and working with other alien nations.

Thessial's early days are unremarkable from our point of view. She was raised and educated on Thessia, and the loss of her father when he died of old age was a blow to her psyche – she adored him, and even before she could use her biotics or walk was capable of speaking in several cants. She was a genius-level intellect even when a child, and was accelerated through educational programs faster than was probably smart. All of this led to a lot of stress and anger on her part, and when she became a maiden, she left home to 'wander.'

And by 'wander,' we mean 'sleep around.'

Even for an asari maiden she was libertine, having literally slept her way through college and ended up pregnant three times in rapid series before she even got her doctorate. The disapproval of her Clan melted to nothing when she invented the first tri-axis gravitic plate stabilization program that VIs could run, which she gave the patent to the Clan for. This device alone drove tens of millions of credits into Steelshape coffers and she was just getting started.

Thessial traveled very widely as a maiden and matron, and was widely known as well – not just on Sur'Kesh, but across the galaxy. Her drug use landed her in the hospital and detox facilities dozens of times, as did bad romantic blowups, a haze of scandals and disapproval following her.

It was in her later matron years that she went off the rails entirely, just after her ascension to Clan Leader. (Guess how she got that job. It involved sex. Lots of it.)

Her sexual escapades turned into a three-month-long orgy session, which included several dozen Vabo and (to great criticism from many in the Union) a large number of salarians as well. Thessial ended up hospitalized and required some bionetic augments to deal with sus'ana organ failure from heavy drinking and drug use, and tried drying herself out a while by 'vacationing' on Sur'Kesh.

It was during this time she forged tight links with the STG and several salarian families, as well as inventing a handful of useful devices we still utilize to this day, such as Protocol Nineteen ocular flashbangs. Thessial was outspoken on the need for the asari to accept salarians as equals and de-escalate economic and scientific competition in furtherance of cooperation, a position that won her few allies in the Republic, but helped her become popular.

Her appearance in the action movie series "STG Agent Lost" (a deviant production if there ever was one), a thinly veiled polemic against the Black Rim Free Sexuality movement, made her widely known in Salarian Space and something of a heroine to the BRFS, in a hilarious backfire no one expected. Thessial herself, after almost a century in Salarian Space, returned to her home to invent again.

Until the past decade or so, this was the pattern – inventions leading to new inventions, then a slowdown, then a drug binge, sex parties, and finally getting so strung out (or over-fucked – she's not a young asari anymore and fucking _twenty people in ten hours _is just… ugh) she has a collapse. Then detox, hospitalization, ritualized focus, and the whole thing begins again.

Now, however, her aims have darkened. She still gets drugged out and the orgies are nearly nonstop (a host of Vabo hangs out at her residence on Thessia and she drags a few along when she comes to Sur'Kesh), but her former adherence to the tenets of siari and Athame have faded into an ever-changing mix of Wheel ritual, human Zen, and more recently, Vabo Dreaming Dancer cults. More and more of her work is on cutting-edge cybernetics of a military focus, heavy bionetic research, and sealed-contract work with the Thirty themselves.

* * *

**Motivations:**

She's stated her goal is to improve the lives of everyone through technology, and to pursue technologies that enhance peace, not war. That being said, her actual goal is probably to 'snort enough red sand to make an elcor jealous' and 'fuck everything that moves, twice if possible, then get started on things that can't move.'

PsyP claims her sexual and drug antics are the pursuit of, or flight from, something she can't deal with, while the Department of Aythaology believes she is a high-functioning creative with emotional issues that she drowns in distraction, some dating back to the death of her father and her early pregnancies. (More on that in mental and psych notes, assuming I bother finishing this stupid report.)

* * *

**Organizations and Affiliations:**

Clan Steelshape, her own company, several STG fronts, and a host of allies and friends who all support her. She's probably an investor in Fornax too, and I still suspect she had a hand in the Black Rim Free Sexuality movement.

* * *

**Tactics:**

For once, a target that a standard STG team can take out with ease. And it's the one person most would never want to shoot.

Let me be blunt: Thessial is old, skinny, drugged up, and usually limping from her various sexscapades. If you can't bring her down non-lethally, you should get your limbs broken off and shoved into a Shieldbreaker to be useful at least.

Thessial is armed with a light pistol (of her own design, so it _will_ be lethal), but is not a trained marksman or combatant.

So… why this section at all? She rolls with a three-person team of bodyguards. Each one is a specialist at a different range bracket – a turian sniper, an asari commando infowar specialist, and a krogan shaman.

Surprise! They're way more than a stock STG team can handle, or a stock Blackwatch/N7/Commando team either. So don't feel bad, you only suck as bad as everyone else's special ops teams.

* * *

_Specific Tactical Methods, Ground Combat:_

This bodyguard team is fast, experienced, and very well-equipped. I'll warn you now, most boast heavy improvements to weapons and armor designed by Thessial herself, so their capabilities exceed what their equipment would imply.

Long-range: The sniper is the biggest threat. An ex-Blackwatch SKYTALON pilot, Dardis Raxtorian is skilled with both conventional sniper rifles – in this case, a Thessial-improved Indra – as well as the Krysae anti-material rifle. Expect near one hundred percent accuracy with either weapon inside a one point six-kilometer range. Raxtorian's SKYTALON is equipped with heavy armor and drop-mine paks, and he's the one who usually engages first, shredding lightly armored targets with Krysae blasts before swapping to the Indra and engaging leadership figures.

Taking down the SKYTALON cripples their ability to deal with heavy armor or battle-suits – nothing the other two have is going to do much if Raxtorian is taken out. I strongly recommend disposable shoulder-launched STA missiles, the volus Songfish MK II series would do nicely.

Medium-range: The commando, one Mesha T'Moinda, the fifth daughter down and basically an outcast, is very dangerous at any range but focuses mostly on mid-range threats. Her primary armaments are a pair of Devotee SMGs, tweaked with phasic armor-piercing properties that will allow you to experience the feeling of high-ex rounds going off _inside _your armor. She also utilizes a variety of low-tech traps linked to explosive mines. Her biotics are all defensive, including walls, barriers, channels, and singularities. T'Moinda is not a top-flight biotic, but like all commandos, she is very adept at mixing them with conventional firepower.

Also, she's an infowar specialist, so I do not recommend using drones, mechs, or other hackable devices around her. Her own infowar assault suite is light on variants, mostly drones and mini-missiles, but she has a knack for placing them where you wouldn't expect. Eating a flight of mini-missiles while trying to deal with the krogan or the turian is a very loud and messy way to die.

Best bet to shut her down is Approach Four: heavy use of mines and explosive traps, poison gas, and radiological grenades. Killing off her mobility leaves a lightly armored nuisance with SMGs that have a range and power insufficient to drop heavy armor or vehicles.

Short-range: Ah, the krogan. This old shaman, known only as 'Two Scars,' is – like the other two – some kind of outcast Thessial picked up or saved or what have you. _[Addendum: She also likes rescuing small, cutesy animals, for reasons I can't fathom.]_ Two Scars is big for a krogan, and old – well past three thousand years. That makes him very durable, and very, very experienced. He utilizes a krogan impact hammer and several super-caliber rapid-fire pistols of Thessial's own design. He tends to strike from surprise, flanking enemies who bypass the other two and proceeding directly to dispense close-range headshots and then enter melee.

Unless you fancy being struck by a thirty-five-kilo hammer, swung by two and a half meters of angry krogan, keeping distance on this guy is a priority. Flashbangs, area denial, and heavy rapid-fire weapons will keep him off of you, but he tends to fight defensively and can utilize a very powerful omni-shield and some infowar tactics.

Best tactics are (as with all krogan) utilizing anti-material rifles to blow holes in him, followed by flame units or plasma to prevent regeneration. If you're stupid enough to enter melee-range with this guy before neutralizing his offensive ability, you deserve every Newton of force this thug is going to beat you with.

* * *

Warning Advisory:

Thessial's own combat abilities are, as I said earlier, nearly null. However, in addition to her bodyguards, she sometimes travels with or is accompanied by others – including STG Teams, Spectres, asari Clan members, and the like.

Collateral damage in these instances is likely to be a certainty and will generate a lot of blowback, so set up your distraction and plant evidence to your chosen instigator up-front if at all possible.

* * *

**Physical Abilities:**

Thessial has undergone moderate bionetic augments – mostly bone reinforcement and transplants of mithia nerve-sensitive skin to multiple zones on her body. It's unknown if she has additional enhancement of a combat nature, but it is very unlikely.

However, stunning chemical agents, knockout drugs, and any other kind of chemical or pharmaceutical agents are not recommended. She's tripped on so many drugs that have already impaired her that such things might kill her or leave her in a coma.

I'll give her this: she has the stamina of a much younger asari. I don't know if I'm impressed or disgusted at that.

* * *

**Mental and Psychological Notes:**

I won't pretend to like Thessial, but I will admit most of her issues aren't her fault. She was pressed educationally from the first time she showed her intellect, with a schedule that would have broken most people, and with ever-increasing expectations heaped on her shoulders. Worse, she's never actually _bonded _with a single person – which is beyond unheard of with asari. That implies she has trust issues, and her frantic sexuality and drug binges do nothing to fix that.

Mentally, she's a high genius – an IQ of 192 on the human/asari scale, 78 out of 80 on the turian scale. She's widely skilled at a host of fields – bionetics and cybernetics, optronics, industrial and personal electronics, omni-theory, communications and telepresence – the list goes on and on. She's also both a voracious reader and a dedicated student of seek-thought, as well as salarian history and culture.

Psychologically, she is a narcissistic, depraved mess, desperately seeking some kind of comfort or ability to cling to something, and finding nothing. Her increasingly hedonistic pursuits are starting to catch up with her health, which has made her both more frantic in said pursuits as well as depressed. Observers indicate her creativity and productivity have fallen off sharply in recent months.

Her increasing interaction with the Vabo – and the Dreaming Dancer cult – have generated a great deal of disapproval and gossip among the Clans, although for the moment, even a distracted and dispirited Thessial is capable of coming up with inventions that shatter the market, like the new series of phase reinforcement devices capable of nullifying phase disruptors.

She has a noted tendency to ramble, to the point that a few of her patents were basically stolen out from under her before she could file them – possibly an opening for technological espionage, although risky. Her preference for asari maidens and young human women is only matched by her near on fetish for salarians of any kind – infiltration is best done with some of the Series Sixteen (augmented build, sexual modification) series of FCA agents.

* * *

**Notable Allies:**

All of the SIX support her fully, as well as most of the STG. I know you don't like her (your only saving grace, really, aside from how slickly you got rid of the old STG Master), but to the younger generation of STG agents, she's what the humans call a 'pin-up girl' – there are countless images of her (naked, sexual poses, fetishes, egg imagery' and WORSE – do not go looking) in every STG Barracks we have.

Most salarians (more than ninety percent) have a better opinion of Thessial than they do of asari in general, and half like her MORE than they care for the SIX. STG has long made sure to interfere in plots against her.

Some of her long-time lovers are also fiercely protective of her, including the asari Solarch, the leader of Clan Hearthwatch, several Palavanus, and the quarian Admiral Daro'Xen (although the latter is purely on terms of intellectual admiration – poor lady. Are you _certain _we can't just, you know, accident a few slaver bases like Shepard did? It would be cathartic).

* * *

**Political and Social Notes:**

Thessial is not a political creature in most cases. Her leadership of Clan Steelshape is more theoretical and influencing than direct control, she has a host of assistants and directors doing the heavy lifting and the boring stuff. She's made statements that show she supports the Thirty, but is not gushing over them the way most of the Clans do.

She's also made noises (quietly) in support of both the Lythari and the BRFS movement, which is both disappointing and dangerous. Her more recent moves into more military-focused technologies has resulted in the Lythari distancing themselves, the morons.

She's an unusually strong supporter of the Salarian Union in interactions with the asari, and in all the years of her life, has never once been anything less than fully supportive of the Union, even when that put her at odds with lovers, business associates, or the Thirty themselves. The last is very shocking – most Clan types revere and sublimate themselves before the Thirty. Thessial, on the other hand, castigated them for the actions they took in the fallout of Teknis Corporation and the revelation the Discerning were sabotaging salarian business interests.

Thessial is more comfortable among salarians in a social sense than she is her own people. The crazy bitch is a sex-obsessed lunatic, but I will admit she cares deeply for the salarians, and often mentions her love of her father and her own love of the salarian culture and ideals we uphold.

If she just was less _trampy_…

* * *

**– STG – STG – STG –**

**Warnings:**

The following advisories are considered mandatory reading.

**Hostile actions are not allowed and will probably end up badly for you: **Leave aside the fact she is the strongest ally the salarians have in the ranks of the asari, or the fact that her three-man bodyguard team beat the ever-living fuck out of an entire cell of the Deathwatch, or that her companies do billions of credits' worth of investments and trade with the Union every year.

Hostile action against Thessial will probably get the person doing it killed by his own STG teammates. I can't overstate how much she is admired and loved by a great many salarians who (why escapes me) overlook her sexual excess and drugged up nature to focus on her own appreciation of salarian ideals.

There's no reason to go after her, and why we keep writing this file up as if we're going to has baffled me for decades. The only upside is that I'm older than Mordin and just behind Korals, so I'll be safely dead the next time this request comes up.

**Actions taken should be focused on infiltration and seduction only: **She has a weak spot – young salarian males or females and hard drugs. Instead of stupid over-planned plots, just train some breeder and have him or her hang out at Thessial's open parties with transmitter nano implanted in their bodies. Saves time, money, and effort, although then someone has to wade through the recording and remove all the rampant sex.


End file.
